


This is Why Remus isn't Allowed to Play with Us

by aam5ever



Category: Sanders Sides (Web Series)
Genre: Horror, Just usual scary mentions but all in a sort of fun joking way, M/M, Non-explicit relationships, The Imagination Room (Sanders Sides), Though I call it the Imagination Station because I am low on brain cells rn, death mention, escape room, thank you to the anon that requested this it was so fun to write
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-05
Updated: 2020-05-05
Packaged: 2021-03-02 22:41:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,230
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24014626
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aam5ever/pseuds/aam5ever
Summary: The Gang gets into an escape room together... with a twist. They usually love doing escape rooms, and the Imagination Room, lovingly nicknamed the Imagination Station, was perfect for conjuring up the perfect cocktail of puzzles, clues, and just enough tense fright that it had them all engaged! And then... somebody let Remus in, and, well, his own imagination... gets to all of them, in one way or another.
Relationships: Anxiety | Virgil Sanders/Creativity | Roman "Princey" Sanders, Dark Creativity | Remus Sanders/Logic | Logan Sanders, Morality | Patton Sanders/Deceit Sanders
Comments: 15
Kudos: 105





	This is Why Remus isn't Allowed to Play with Us

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to the anon on Tumblr who sent me this prompt!
> 
> This a standalone fic for now, but please, if you want more to this fic don't hesitate to comment! Also, my tumblr will be at the bottom notes as usual, and feel free to send me more fic requests!

Why? Why. Why. Why.  _ Why.  _ Did they let Remus come?   
  
That is all they could think of, almost every single one of them, traversing this absolute disaster of an escape room. An “escape room” is a generous term, at this point; it’s an ever-shifting haunted house that  _ happens  _ to have levers to pull, clues to find, and then many, many things to chase you until you’re out of breath and hoping for a quick end if it comes to it. None of them knew that deciding to do an escape room today would result in such  _ disastrous  _ things to their health, but here they were, screaming, shouting, and cackling (in Remus’ case) all the way through this nightmare.

“Come on! This way, my friends! I will lead you to victor- AH-!”   
  
A ghoul suddenly appeared in front of all of them, sending them scrambling in the other direction. They tripped over both the roots and dead weeds jutting out from the ground and each other, unsure of where to go until one of them shouted over the other to make a left turn to a clearing in these stifling, thick dead woods. Yeah. Woods. They were in the Imagination Station, in the  _ woods  _ somehow. 

Virgil doubles over, hands on his knees and trying to catch his breath while expressing some... pointed displeasure over their predicament.    
  
“Roman this is your fault I hate you so much right now I can’t believe you did this you let that absolute  _ maniac  _ decide on the escape room format-” 

Immediately, the prince jumps to his own defense with a hand fluttering to his chest and another flinging out dramatically towards the sky. “Oh! Oh! So this is  _ my  _ fault! Well  _ I’m  _ not the one who left the Imagination Station door open and let him waltz right in!”   
  
Roman and Virgil now turn their glares to Patton, who puts his hands up in both mercy and a bit of fear. Virgil is an absolute mess right now and Roman isn’t far behind, the both of them now leaning on to each other in the shifting Hellscape around them. Janus has been trying to keep it together, but compared to Logan, he was also coming apart at the seams and trying not to be as jumpy as he undoubtedly is. He’s been blaming everything on something else ever since they got into this comedy of errors, going so far as to say  _ Patton  _ was scaring him. 

  
  
_ “Patton? Oh, now I know you’re lying-” _ _  
_ _  
_ _ “That  _ frog  _ thing that he became manifested in this God forsaken place and it scared me half to death, not any of Remus’ other awful thought up tricks!” _ _  
_ _  
_ _ “Wait... you’re scared of Lilypaddon?” _ _  
  
_

_ A stare from all five pairs of eyes became quickly directed his way, and he couldn’t help his compulsion. _ _  
_ _  
_ _ “...no.” _

So now it was Patton’s turn to be defending himself from Roman and Virgil’s accusatory stares, pointing to Remus. The Duke was leaning against his mace, rocking back and forth with a smile on his face. He seemed pleased as a peach.    
  
“He was making a puppy dog face! You  _ know  _ how I can’t say no to that!” It was true; Patton was a sucker for big eyes and a droopy frown from anybody. In a small voice, he added, “How could I not let him play with us?”   
  
“This isn’t  _ playing,  _ Patton,” Roman gestured to the rolling thunderstorm above and the cracked, dry Earth below them. The dead trees that circled them seem to have no end, and red eyes were watching them all hungrily from the darkness as if waiting to pounce. “This is a nightmare!”   
  
“Well, technically,” From his left, Logan snapped the book closed that he’s been reading this entire time. “All of this is a figment of imagination, Roman, you know that. Along with that, it is an imaginary escape room, an activity done at leisure, also known, if you are younger, as ‘play time’, so Patton isn’t wrong for saying this is all... playing, as distasteful as that is for me being here.” He tucks the book under his arm and straightens up his glasses, looking between all of them. Now they all were staring at  _ him  _ incredulously. “What.”   
  
Remus stops leaning on his mace to hang it on his shoulder, blowing air out of his mouth like a deflated balloon. “You know, you’re no fun Logan! Even when I do this-” He changes his face into an eldritch monster. Roman has to catch Patton, who faints temporarily. “-you don’t even bat an eyelash!”   
  
“Because I know who’s behind the scare, Remus.” Logan smirks just a bit. “And frankly, it just doesn’t get to me.” Then he begins to walk forward, the rest of them still recovering from Remus’ prank. With only one more glance over his shoulder, he continues, becoming the fearless leader of this fearful pack and one thorn in the backside that looks like somebody just burst his bubble.    
  
They traverse further, and the forest begins to morph into something more like a gigantic dollhouse. The branches pull in and stiffen, then chipped, dull paint lines the edges of the wood. The ground goes from muddy to compact to stiff as rotting planks, and paintings of elongated, stretched faces that seem akin to The Scream hang now, along with some... fascinating crude crayon depictions of...  _ many  _ things litter the walls. Patton clings on to Virgil’s hoodie tight enough to give it a few more new tears in the fabric, and Janus, bless his soul, has been clutching his cane as a weapon and smacking it about when things got too spooky. Next to Logan, Remus began to jollily skip ahead with a distorted hum, looking now at three separate, very unsettling doors that all led to who knows where.   
  
“Oh ho ho! This should be fun. Everyone, take a buddy! If we want out of this place, I’m sure we’re going to need to split up!” As soon as he says it, his smile curls up further than his mustache. Watching the color drain from their expression was just so much  _ fun. _

Both Virgil and Patton stammered, “S-S-S-Split up!?”, looking now at one another as if their worst fears have been realized. Their death grip on each other somehow got worse. On instinct, both Roman and Janus glanced at each other with concern and seemed to come to a common conclusion: these two can  _ not  _ be left alone together in this place. They’d break.    
  
Within seconds, Janus had a hold of Patton’s cardigan and was dragging him through door number one. “Oh I  _ love  _ this. This is going to be so much fun.” He looks over at Remus with a sarcastic grin, who only smiles and waves them off while blowing kisses. “Remus, you couldn’t be any more of my favorite person right now-”

“Goodbye, Dee! So brave, so strong~”   
  
“I’m so  _ not  _ about to shove this can so far up your-”   
  
“Um, ha J-Janus do we have to?” Patton was trying to help soothe him and also get out of this, but it wasn’t working. All pleas were ignored as Janus’ prattling on continued all the way past the door before it shut... and sunk into the wall, fully disappeared.    
  
_ Oh absolutely not,  _ Virgil thought, beginning to back up towards the far wall. “H-How about you guys go on without me? Come back, let me know how it is, kill me first maybe and drag my dead body with you guys so I don’t have to consciously go through this...” He was fiddling rapidly with his hoodie strings, giving the most strained, forced smile that Roman has ever seen. Knowing just how much pleasure Remus was taking in Virgil’s fear of this chaotic escape room, he offers a hand to the anxious side with a brave face.    
  
“It’ll be alright, Virge.” He says it with his best form of certainty, even while being on edge. Hopefully the charm and the confidence would have the other man falling into his arms so that he could be the proper savior for once. “Nothing can actually  _ hurt  _ us here, remember? I’ll even let you close your eyes the whole way through. Let the dashing prince Roman guide you through all the treacherous-”   
  
“What, you think I’m a chicken?”   
  
...or maybe not. His face drops a bit in shock as he says the wrong words. “Huh? Well, yes, duh-”   
  
“Oh I’ll show you chicken, Mister stupid... whatever, we’re going.” Virgil storms right past Roman’s offered hand and points to the door, hand obviously shaking as he tries to be the tough one about it. “Open it.”   
  
Roman blinks and then rushes to do so, holding it open and taking an amusing bow. “After you, Lord of Dark-”   
  
“BIte me.” Virgil mumbles while pushing Roman’s head off to the side, who only laughs and begins spinning up self-comforting tales of how they will vanquish whatever lies beyond this door as they enter. It creaks to a close and swallows itself, disappearing as well.    
  
All that’s left is the final door. Remus is practically jumping up and down, clapping his hands together before tugging Logan along. “C’mon, you dunce! You think pretending not to be scared will get you through what I have in store for us?”   
  
Logan just eyes him suspiciously, not even bothering to fight the incessant jerking of his wrist towards the sickly green door. “So you were saving something special for me in hopes of it being the worst of it.” He checks his watch. “I have to start preparing dinner soon, you know. Eventually this little... whatever this is has to come to an end.”   
  
“It will, it will!” Remus assures him with a roll of his eyes. The door opens for them with a loud  _ BANG  _ of a swing that hits the wall. Logan doesn’t even jump or tense. “But first, we go through here, and we finally escape!”   
  
Seeing no other way out of this, Logan sighs. “Fine then.”   
  
And in they went.

\---

Four out of six of the sides barely know how they escaped that with their self assigned buddies.    
  
Patton and Janus both stammer over each other about their door holding a gigantic never ending bog, full of ginormous scaly and slimy creatures they’d typically enjoy if they were only smaller. The Imagination Station under Remus’ rule, however, had very different plans in mind, and they both got chased around a swampy, mossy bog, tripping and falling into mud and muck, hiding behind willows and water rocks, just to make heads or tales of any of it. Both of them could barely catch their breath before they heard an accused croak or a slithering hiss or rattle that sent them scampering to a different hiding location. Janus’ cane was used more than once to fight off assailants as Patton hastily looked for the exit. It had been an exit hatch of sorts at the literal bottom of all the muck, and they had to swim past more than dead  _ swamp life  _ to get to it. Patton shudders, remembering how close he was to ending up sleeping with the fishes, and Logan has to remind him, once again, that nothing in that mindscape has any real consequences.    
  
In one of the other doors, more horrors awaited Roman and Virgil. They’d arrived at a vampire manor, which at first Virgil was more than okay with closing his eyes to, but at one point of them holding hands begrudgingly, even  _ they  _ got seperated. It turned into a Scooby Doo-esque chase with vampires and ghosts and demonic horned atrocities, all running in one door and out the other just for them to find each other when they thankfully found the same closet to hide in. Roman made the very obvious joke there, which made Virgil immediately  _ leave  _ the closet to just take his chances with whatever was out there and avoid being stuck squished so close to the creative side. They both ended up falling through a trapdoor into... a murderer’s lair beneath the manor, leading to more chasing, more screaming, and finally a door that didn’t lead just to another horror factory.    
  
When it came time for Logan’s little trip, he didn’t mind telling them all, though there was the slightest hesitation. They all waited with baited breath to hear about what would make Logan even hesitate to say, all attention turned to him as he cleared his throat...

“It was... a library.”   
  
They all waited for the sick, disturbing twist.    


“It...” He then buried his face in his hands. “All of the books, they were out of order.” All of their faces immediately go blank as he continues. “It was atrocious! The Dewey Decimal System was completely disregarded! The books with author last names being B were stored in the biography section, all of the Harry Potter books were scattered like  _ horcruxes  _ and just appeared wherever they wanted, and the young adults section, oh the young adults section...” It seems to disconcert him so much that he sits down. “I need... a glass of water.”   
  
Remus happily passes it to him, setting now on the table as all of them are recovering. “So,” They all look at him, emotionally, physically, and mentally exhausted as he grinned from ear to ear. “Wanna go again?”   


The reactions came all at once. 

“NO!”

**Author's Note:**

> Tumblr: aam5ever  
> Twitter: @aam5ever


End file.
